An Alternate Ending (to Allegiant)
by extremepurple
Summary: Starting with an excerpt from chapter 47 of Allegiant, the story takes a different turn, changing the ending to create new possibilities and twists. The ending will be written in the perspectives of Caleb and Tris. Spoiler alert! You shouldn't be reading this if you have not already finished reading Allegiant. Disclaimer: I do not own these characters; they belong to Veronica Roth.
1. Chapter 1: Caleb

**"** "Caleb," I say. "Give me the backpack."

"What?" he says.

I slip my hand under the back of my shirt and grab my gun. I point it at him. "Give me the backpack."

"Tris, no." He shakes his head. "No, I won't let you do that."

"Put down your weapon!" the guard screams at the end of the hallway. "Put down your weapon or we will fire!"

"I might survive the death serum," I say. "I'm good at fighting off serums. There's a chance I'll survive. There's no chance you would survive. Give me the backpack or I'll shoot you in the leg and take it from you."

Then I raise my voice so the guards can hear me. "He's my hostage! Come any closer and I'll kill him!"

In that moment he reminds me of our father. His eyes are tired and sad. There's a shadow of a beard on his chin. His hands shake as he pulls the backpack to the front of his body and offers it to me.

I take it and swing it over my shoulder. I keep my gun pointed at him and shift so he's blocking my view of the soldiers at the end of the hallway.

"Caleb," I say, "I love you."

His eyes gleam with tears as he says, "I love you, too, Beatrice."

"Get down on the floor!" I yell, for the benefit of the guards.

Caleb sinks to his knees.

"If I don't survive," I say, "tell Tobias I didn't want to leave him." **"**

**-****_Allegiant_****, chapter 47**

Caleb

Hearing those words is what made me change my mind. Time and time again, whenever I had the choice or the ability to save someone close to me, I didn't take it. I let them go. Tris, our mother, our father, some of the other transfers that I had befriended, Susan, other people from Abnegation. Everyone. I am alone, but Tris is not. And that is why, in that single second of tension, I changed my mind. From behind me, I could hear my sister shoot at one of the guards, and from in front of me, I saw both guards go down: one from his wound, and the other to catch and aid his comrade.

Swiftly, I stand up, turn around, and sprint after Tris. I can't let her sacrifice herself for me. The hallways are a blur as I speed fast. I wasn't aware I could run this fast, but it may just be the desperation and the adrenaline and the sheer fact that I can't let my sister die for me. Guilt washes over me as I catch up to Tris. I leap and tackle her to the floor just before she can turn into another hallway. I pin her to the ground as I release her grip from her gun. I lean in close to her and urgently whisper, "Tris. No. I can't let you do this." I know she will retaliate, and I am prepared for when she struggles free from my grip and attempts to disbalance me. Instead of falling like she had intended, I land on both balls of my feet, ready to once again jump at her and push her against a wall. I know simply fighting her would fail, as she has been trained in fighting one on one, whereas I could only study from books back at the Erudite Headquarters. Almost frantically, I mentally go through everything I read discussing single combat, trying to think of a way to stall my sister long enough to save her from going on a suicide mission. It was then that I remember a quote from an ancient book. "The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy." But how? And then it hit me.

I continued to keep my firm grip on Tris's shoulders as I pushed her against the wall. In order to confuse her, I need to do something she wouldn't expect me to do. In this current situation, there were two. I used both methods against her.

Though our positions were not ideal, they were close enough. Our eyes were level, and I could see a hurricane of emotions go through them: anger, hate, love, sacrifice, sadness, love, pain. She was sacrificing herself to save me, but I will not let her. It will be me who dies, and that is because Tris, my little sister, still has so much to live for.

I angle my head slightly before pressing my lips against hers. I felt her body tense up against the wall, but before she could shove me off and fight back, I drew a gun that I had stuck in the waistband of my pants and shot Tris in the leg. I felt her body go stiff before she slid down the wall to the floor in pain. I could tell that she was furious, but I couldn't let my sister die for me. "Sorry," I whisper pathetically as I turn around and sprint down the next hallway, determined to get there and activate the memory serum.


	2. Chapter 2: Caleb

Caleb

I sprint down the hallway, gun in hand. It's a good thing I was still holding it, as there were two guards protecting the entrance to the Weapons Lab. I raise my gun and aim. The day prior, I had some practice firing a gun, but I hadn't used against a living person yet. That was about to change. I fired. Somehow, the shot I had fired hit a guard's gun and caused it to explode. In all of my readings, I did not know that this could happen. Who knew that I would learn something on this suicide mission?

The explosion, though small, was enough to knock out one guard and disable the other. I will perhaps never understand the concept of 'beginner's luck'. With the guards out of the way, I opened up the backpack I was carrying (after I took it back from Tris) and took out the clean suit. The clean suit was essentially a white, full-body suit, where I would put on and zip up from the front. There was a piece of headgear that came with it; it was also white, but cylindrical, with a clear plastic screen which would allow me to see. I put on both parts of the suit before taking out the explosives from the backpack. Matthew had taught me how to set up and activate the explosives; I did as he had taught me, going through the motions as if this was just practice again, and not the real thing.

After the explosives were in place, I went out of the entrance to the Weapons Lab and around corner of a hallway. With the remote in my hand, I crouched and used the wall as a kind of support structure. I pressed a button on the remote, and the explosives detonated. Because of how close I was to the explosion, my ears rung painfully, muted out the other sounds as a result of the explosion: walls falling down, broken glass, alarms going off, the near-silent sound of the aerosol form of the death serum being released. In the midst of all of this, I stood up, off-balance at first, to the Weapons Lab. I knew what I had to do, and I was determined to do it.


	3. Chapter 3: Tris

Tris

_Dammit, Caleb_, I thought as feebly attempt to wrap my leg wound in pain. This wasn't supposed to happen-at least not in my mind. I was going to activate the memory serum, and Caleb was going to live. He will live. He will live because I love him and I will sacrifice myself to save him.

I winced in pain as I stood up, using a wall to support me. I shuffled over to the corner of the hallway, down to the corridor Caleb had run down. I reached the corner of the hallway, still leaning against the wall. I looked down at my leg to observe my wound. Caleb had grazed my leg with the bullet, but because of the position of my leg when he had shot me, the bullet graze went all the way down my shin, making the wound large yet superficial.

I was about to set off when I realized I wasn't holding a gun. Panicking, I searched the hallway. I found the gun a few feet away from me, and about twenty feet from where Caleb had shot me. During the confusion of the encounter with the guards and Caleb running off, the gun must have been kicked down the hallway. I reached down and picked up the gun before continuing on to the Weapons Lab. I kept a steady, jogging pace, and I was almost there when the building itself began to shake. Caleb must've detonated the explosives, I thought. The force of the explosion caused me to fall to the ground. Luckily, I fell on my good leg, and I had not been harmed.

Shakily, I stood back up. Holding on to the gun, I walked towards the now-demolished door to the Weapons Lab. I could hear the death serum being deployed, but I was not afraid. I knew I would survive. I then reached the first entrance to the Weapons Lab. There were two guards who had been knocked out. I knew Caleb had done this but exactly how he did it confused me. It was no matter; I had to save my brother, and time was running out. I turned in to the front room, and what I saw would both scare me and justify why I had done what I did.

In the Weapons Lab was Caleb, dressed in the clean suit. He seemed to be fighting the death serum, but that was not what scared me. What scared me was that David was in the Weapons Lab as well, aiming a gun to kill my brother.


End file.
